


into the city we grow

by millepertuis



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: A Considerable Amount of Hand-Holding, F/F, Flashbacks, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: Ginny waits for surgery, and for Amelia.





	into the city we grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MykaWells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MykaWells/gifts).



> title from Atlas Genius's _The City We Grow_

 

They put Ginny in a clinic and argue over her head about treatment options. _This is it_ , she thinks in a loop. _This is it, you’re done, you’re done_ —

Amelia doesn’t call, doesn’t knock on Ginny’s door every morning with coffee and the day’s schedule. Ginny hasn’t got a schedule.

She gets so many calls the first couple of days she’d probably freak out if she wasn’t so high on fear and pain meds. Her mom; Will, even after everything. Mike, Noah, Blip, everybody on the team.

She can’t deal with any of it, so she gets Oscar to manage everyone, talks to Evelyn on the phone and nobody else.

Things haven’t been this quiet for a long time. She hasn’t been this alone for a long time. Security’s pretty tight to keep reporters and fans away; only the people on her list are allowed in to see her, and Ginny doesn’t put anybody on her list, doesn’t see anybody.

 _You’re done, you’re done, you’re_ —

Cara texts her at some point, a quick, _Sorry you got injured._ Ginny kills about three hours deliberating how to answer. _It happens_ , she eventually sends back.

Amelia doesn’t call, and doesn’t call, and doesn’t call.

 

 

 

“I can’t do this,” Ginny told her. She had waited until they were away from the reporters, at least.

Amelia gave a look around and then pushed her into the girls’ bathroom.

Ginny went straight to a sink and threw water on her face.

She was usually pretty good with the press. Amelia wasn’t sure what had set her off. She couldn’t quite get a read on Ginny yet.

“I’m never gonna get called up, I’m never gonna get to the Majors. It’s just not gonna happen. I’m not that good.”

“You are.”

Ginny shook her head.

Amelia tried to think back to what the reporters had been saying, but nothing stood out. One guy was about just as sexist as he was racist, but he hadn’t been around today, and the rest were pretty good people. Everyone out there knew Ginny was going to get called up sooner or later.

Amelia watched the tension in Ginny’s shoulders, the wild look in her mirror’s reflection. Something clicked.

Everyone out there knew Ginny was going to get called up, but Ginny hadn’t; or she had known, but she hadn’t believed it, not really, not until a few minutes ago.

She touched her hand to Ginny’s shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “It’s alright.”

Ginny shook her off. She leaned on the nearest wall for balance, then slid down until she was on the floor.

Amelia tried not to grimace. This particular bathroom couldn’t get a lot of traffic, but still.

Ginny stared at the hands she had propped up on her knees for a long time. “My dad’s dead,” she said eventually, voice completely blank.

Amelia’s heart twisted. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Ginny’s face crumpled. She curled her hands into fists and hid her face against them. “I can’t do this.”

Amelia went and sat next to her. “Of course you can,” she said.

“Nobody ever has before.”

“So you’ll be the first one.”

“You really believe that?”

Amelia did; she had since the moment she had first seen Ginny on that television screen. Yet that belief was so much stronger, now that she had met Ginny, now that she had seen how hard she worked, seen her strength, her charisma, her drive from up close.

Ginny had picked her head up to look at her. Amelia cautiously reached her hand out to Ginny’s, slid her fingers against hers and squeezed.

“I do,” she said. “I believe in you.”

 

 

 

Ginny wakes up the day before surgery, and Amelia is there.

She’s standing by the window, suit as sharp as ever, her face drawn and tired like Ginny’s never seen before.

“I’m pretty sure Eliot’s having three nervous breakdowns a day,” she blurts out.

Amelia throws a startled look at her, tries to put down Ginny’s medical chart without looking. She fumbles and almost drops it.

“And Will called. He left me a couple of messages, and it’s good, you know, but I have no idea what to say to him.” Amelia takes a hesitant step towards Ginny’s bed. “And, and Noah, I don’t know what to do with him either. He wanted to go away with me during break, and it sounded nice, you know, to get away from everything. I haven’t answered his calls either, I think he finally stopped trying.” Amelia’s halfway to Ginny now. Ginny starts speaking faster. “I had this weird moment with Mike. I didn’t want to tell you. I wanted to talk it over with him, and he didn’t, and then he wanted to talk it over, and I didn’t, I don’t know, it’s all such a mess. We’re teammates, you know, that’s the important thing, baseball’s the important thing—”

“Hey,” Amelia says, and tentatively touches her fingertips to the back of Ginny’s hand.

Ginny’s throat tightens and her mouth snaps shut.

Amelia looks, for the first time Ginny can remember, completely lost. Ginny’s arm hurts, and she’s so scared she can’t talk about it, and what she wants almost more than anything—

“Are you staying?” she asks Amelia, voice wobbly.

Amelia’s face softens. “Yeah, Gin,” she says. “I’m staying.”

 

 

 

“—and if you have anything to say, you can say it to my lawyer.”

“Amelia?”

Amelia turned around and saw Ginny at the door, warily looking at Eric. Shit. Ginny had had a call scheduled with her mother after the game; Amelia should have guessed she’d be upset and come by afterwards.

“Everything okay?” Ginny checked, still watching Eric.

“Everything’s fine. I’m sorry, Gin, I’ll just be a minute. Wait for me here, alright?”

Ginny nodded, and Amelia pushed at Eric’s shoulder to get him moving. She grabbed her spare key from Ginny and let the door close behind them on their way out.

“That’s the kid?” Eric said once they were in the hallway, raising Amelia’s hackles even further up. “What the fuck are you even doing here, Ames?”

“My job,” she said shortly.

He looked bewildered. “Look, I’m sure she’s a good—pitcher or catcher or whatever the fuck—” Eric was even less interested in sports than she was. She had liked that at the time. “—but you’re not a sports agent. Don’t you see you’re wasting your time here? Look, the agency’s willing to take you back, alright, you don’t even have to work with me if you don’t want to, so just. Be reasonable and come back, alright?”

She waited a second to make sure he was done, then repeated, “You have anything to say to me, you have my lawyer’s number.”

She went back into her room and slammed the door behind her for emphasis.

Ginny was sitting at the table in the kitchenette. Amelia dropped the key onto her lap and got herself a beer. She took a long sip and then wiped her mouth.

“You want anything?” she asked Ginny.

“No. Who was that guy?”

Amelia made a face. She didn’t talk about her life before she met Ginny, or only carefully edited parts of her work: the things that might be useful to Ginny later, the funny anecdotes that might make her laugh.

“We used to work together,” she said.

“And you talk through lawyers?”

“He’s also my ex-husband.”

Ginny made a face, too. “That guy?”

Amelia took another long sip of her beer.

“I didn’t even know you were married.”

“I’m your agent, Ginny, not your girl friend.”

Ginny threw her a sharp look, and Amelia bit her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s just forget about it. Did you need me?”

“It’s fine,” Ginny said stiffly. “It was nothing. I’ll just go.”

Amelia blew out a frustrated breath. She wished Eric hadn’t come. She wished seeing him again, seeing him in the same room as Ginny, hearing him speak so dismissively of her, hadn’t made her so angry; or that she’d been better at keeping it in, instead of lashing out at Ginny.

She followed Ginny into the hallway.

“Ginny, wait. I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean that. I’m just in a bad mood right now.”

“I can see that.”

“I deserve that,” she said with a sigh. “Gin, I’m.... Of course I’m your friend, alright? Can we—go back inside and start over?”

Ginny looked at her, then away. She unbent a little. “Yeah. Okay.”

Amelia held the door open for her. They went back inside and talked long into the night.

 

 

 

“We can’t keep going like this,” Ginny says eventually.

Amelia looks away. “No,” she agrees.

“I ask too much of you, I know I do—”

“Ginny, no—”

“I do. I didn’t handle it well, your—thing with Mike. I’m sorry you broke up.”

“It wasn’t because of you.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Amelia doesn’t answer. “I’m sorry about the way I handled things with Will,” she says instead. “That was your personal business, and I shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

“I’m the one who keeps pushing at the boundaries. I ask you to play buffer with my mom, I call you when I freak out in the middle of the night.”

“Ginny—”

“All that stuff I said to you the last time we talked, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want you to go.”

“I’m sorry about what I said, too. I didn’t want to leave you. I should have come back sooner.”

Ginny makes herself breathe until the heat behind her eyes goes away.

She doesn’t know when it started. When she started needing Amelia so much. When Amelia became the person she wanted to call when she felt happy, or scared, or sad.

“I think we have to talk everything through.”

Amelia watches her carefully.

“I’ve been pushing you away lately. I didn’t know what else to do. Having panic attacks in the middle of the night, and calling you.... I didn’t know how to deal with that. What we have, it’s, it’s a work relationship, but you’re more than that to me.” She takes a breath. “I don’t want to just be work to you.”

“You’re not,” Amelia says immediately, distraught. “Gin, come on, you know you’re not.”

“We’ve never talked about it. I don’t know where I stand with you. I tell you practically everything, I rely on you for everything. I’d be completely lost without you, and you.... you don’t need me at all.”

“That’s not true. I need you so—I _do_ need you.” Amelia breathes out shakily. “Before I met you, my life was empty. _I_ was empty. I told you I came to El Paso because you needed me, but the truth is, I needed you just as much. You’re so important to me. You’re my friend.”

Ginny closes her eyes and gathers her courage. “Am I?”

 

 

 

“Hey, Slater,” one of Ginny’s El Paso teammates called. “I think Cinderella’s about ready to turn back into a pumpkin.”

Amelia looked up from her computer to see Ginny slumped over the table in the team’s booth.

“It’s the coach that—Never mind, I don’t care.”

She hurried to shut down her computer and gather her things before somebody snapped a picture of Ginny drooling on the table or something. “Gin, wake up.”

“I’m up, I’m up.”

The El Paso Chihuahuas had been having a pretty grueling stretch of games; that and that night’s celebratory beers seemed to have done Ginny in.

“‘Twas a good game,” she said, yawning, as Amelia helped her up.

“It was. You played great.”

“Mmh.”

They didn’t talk on the way to the car. Ginny leaned a bit on Amelia, more tired than drunk.

Ginny sank into the passenger seat and seemed ready to fall asleep right there. Amelia sighed and bent over to put Ginny’s seatbelt on for her.

Ginny’s nose brushed against Amelia’s neck. She felt her inhale, lean closer.

“Ginny,” she said sharply, and moved back, heart pounding in her ears.

Ginny looked at her through half-lid eyes.

“Sorry,” she said after a while. She didn’t say anything else the whole way back.

 

 

 

Amelia jumps up from her seat by Ginny’s bed and says, “Let’s not do this.”

“It felt like we broke up,” Ginny forges on. “And I missed you so much. Not just—what you do for me, not just because I wanted someone there. Just—you. I missed your voice. I missed the bitchy way you shoot down guys who hit on you when you’re working. I missed the smell of your perfume.”

“Gin—”

“Did you miss me?”

“I did,” Amelia says, very quietly.

“Okay.” Ginny lets herself breathe. “Okay.”

“We shouldn’t be talking about this. You’re going through a lot right now, you—”

“Do _not_ tell me I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“Look, if you—if you want to date women, I—I can help you.”

“Oh my god,” Ginny mutters.

“I’ve made my career in the entertainment industry, I’m an old hand at this,” Amelia goes on resolutely. “If you want to come out, we can—make a plan. But this....” She trails off. “Ginny, you’ve got to see how bad an idea this is.”

Ginny averts her eyes.

“Yeah.”

 

 

 

 

“Please talk to me.”

Ginny shook her head. She kept pacing around the room.

“I can’t, I can’t talk about this with you,” she said.

Amelia wanted to grab her and make her stop, make her talk to her, make her look at her.

Ginny had finished the night crying in a stranger's bathtub.

How had Amelia let things get this far?

“Why not?”

“I can’t, I just can't. I can't talk about it with anyone. There's no one in my life—I don’t have a life outside baseball, I never have.”

“You can’t imagine I care _that much_ about baseball,” Amelia said, trying to make Ginny smile.

Ginny didn't smile. “Yeah, Amelia? What if I _don't_ want to play? What if I up and quit tomorrow, and all your work, everything you’ve done so I could get here, all that turns out to have been for nothing? You tell me you’re not gonna care?”

“I care about you.”

Ginny stopped pacing and stared. Amelia stared back.

 

 

 

“What kind of agent would I be, if I told you—” Amelia cuts herself off with a frustrated huff. She rubs at her temples, trying to stave off a tension headache. Ginny wishes she could do that for her. “Look, if there’s ever a good time in an athletic career to come out with an older woman who works for you, let me tell you, this certainly isn’t it.”

Ginny can’t help but roll her eyes. “It’s not like I’m asking you to come out with me tomorrow.”

“There’s that, at least,” Amelia mutters.

“Could you just—” Ginny stops abruptly. She inhales slowly. “Stop running numbers and look at me.”

Amelia does, then looks away again. “Ginny, please.”

“You micromanage every aspect of my life, but you can’t ever let me in.” She chokes out a laugh. “Do you know, I think you’re actually the only person I can let myself be scared around? Isn’t that funny?”

Amelia closes her eyes, looking pained.  “Oh god,” she says, and comes back to sit next to Ginny’s bed. “Okay.” She sucks in a mouthful of air. “Okay. Here we go. We were trying to get pregnant, with my ex-husband. It wasn’t going very well. We tried IVF, and it didn’t take. We tried again. We were at the doctor’s office, and she told us it hadn’t worked that time either, and he broke up with me right there. I left the doctor’s office and I went straight to work, and I didn’t see Eric outside of court until that day he came to El Paso. There. That’s the story. That’s the kind of person I am. I don’t let myself be vulnerable. I don’t open up. I don’t cry. That’s me. That’s how I function.”

“I’m sorry,” Ginny says. Then, because she can’t help herself: “Your ex is a dick.”

Amelia laughs. “Yeah, he is.”

She doesn’t pull away when Ginny hooks her fingers into her sleeve, when she brushes her thumb against Amelia’s wrist.

“I’m not someone you want to be with, Gin,” Amelia tells her, eyes shining.

“You are,” Ginny answers her helplessly.

Amelia draws her hand away from Ginny to brush Ginny’s hair back behind her ears, cup her face. “I came to you,” she says, “because I wanted to do something that—meant something. Because I saw you and—Gin, you were the brightest thing I’d ever seen. You are, still. Don’t—please don’t ask me to do anything that might jeopardize that.”

A tear pushes past Ginny’s defenses and barrels down her cheek. “Am I to give up even this, then?” she asks shakily. “Don’t I get to keep anything for me?”

“Oh, Gin....”

Ginny can’t hold back a sob.

“I want to play, I can’t, I can’t _not_ , Amelia—”        

Baseball is a part of her. It was grafted onto her bones when she was young and it grew within her. She doesn’t know who she is without it.

But it takes, and it takes, and she doesn’t know how much more of it she can bear.

“You will, I swear you will, don’t you see that’s why I can’t—”

“No,” Ginny says. She shakes her head once, then again. “No. I want to play so badly. But I’m _so tired_ of enduring. I’m so tired of cutting away parts of myself. I can’t do it anymore.” She tries to concentrate on the warmth of Amelia’s skin against hers, on the softness of her hands. She tries to draw strength from it. “Would you just tell me?” she asks. “Would you just say it?”

Amelia stares at her helplessly. “I just want you to be happy,” she says. “It’s all I want.” She brushes Ginny’s tears away, the gesture so tender it unmakes Ginny.

Amelia’s face blurs as she bends her head to lean her forehead against Ginny’s. They stay like that and breathe together.

 _Something has to break,_ Ginny thinks. And then, the hope of it almost unbearable: _Something has to mend._

“I love you,” Amelia says, softly. “I’m in love with you.”

 

 

 

 

“What if I never play again?” Ginny asks before they take her away for surgery.

“You will.”

“What if I don’t?”

Amelia rubs a thumb over Ginny’s cheekbone. “You’ll do something else, and you’ll be brilliant at it. I don’t think you could ever be anything else.”

“And you and me?”

“Well, I’ll have to find another job.”

“Amelia.”

“I’ve always liked the way you say my name.”

“Yeah? _Amelia_.”

Amelia pinches her nose, then bends down to press a kiss to Ginny’s forehead.

“I’m all in. Alright? I’m all in.”

 

 

 

Amelia was looking through the media coverage as the plane to San Diego—to Ginny’s Major League debut—prepared to take off. Ginny had already curled up on the window seat with her headphones, as uncommunicative as on any game day. Amelia looked over at her and felt so, so proud, and a little smug. _I always knew you could do it_ , she’d told Ginny after she’d gotten the call.

Ginny’s breaths started coming out in quick, nervous pants. She made an effort to steady her breathing, carefully breathing in, and out.

Her hand nudged against Amelia’s gently, so gently, as though by accident.

Warmth, encroaching warmth inside Amelia’s chest.

Amelia switched her smartphone to her left hand, and reached out to hold Ginny’s until her breathing settled, and for a long while after.

 

 

 

Amelia is leaning over her when Ginny opens her eyes. She’s smiling, a little.

It can’t be that bad if Amelia’s smiling.

“Gin?”

Ginny smiles back, slow and syrupy coming off the anesthesia.

She says, “What else ‘ve you got?”

 


End file.
